Pharmacists disciplined over birth control - Women's health

Pharmacists disciplined over morning-after pill

Walgreen workers violated state rule by refusing to fill prescriptions

ST. LOUIS - Walgreen Co., the nation??�s largest drugstore chain by revenue, said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule.

The four cited religious or moral objections to filling prescriptions for the morning-after pill and have said they would like to maintain their right to refuse to dispense, and in Illinois that is not an option, Walgreen spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said.

A rule imposed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich in April requires Illinois pharmacies that sell contraceptives approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control. Pharmacies that do not fill prescriptions for any type of contraception are not required to follow the rule.

Ed Martin, an attorney for the pharmacists, on Tuesday called the discipline pretty disturbing and said they would consider legal action if Walgreen doesn??�t reconsider.

At least six otherness pharmacists have sued over the rule, claiming it forces them to violate their religious beliefs. Many of those lawsuits were filed by Americans United for Life, the Chicago public interest law firm with which Martin is affiliated.

The licenses of both a medicine and that store??�s chief pharmacist could be revoked if they don??�t comply with the Illinois rule, Bruce said.

Walgreen, based in Deerfield, Ill., put the four on leave Monday, Bruce said. She would not identify them. They will remain on unpaid leave until they either decide to abide by Illinois law or relocate to anotherness state without such a rule or law. For example, she said, the company would be willing to help them get licensed in Missouri and they could work for Walgreen there.

Walgreen policy says pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions to which they are morally opposed ??" except where state law prohibits ??" but they must take steps to have the prescription filled by anotherness pharmacist or store, Bruce said.

Bruce said Wednesday the four pharmacists were the first Walgreen had disciplined under the state??�s rule. Walgreen has 488 stores in Illinois, out of about 5,000 nationwide, with generally three to five pharmacists employed at each one.

It was not clear whether otherness large medicine chains had taken similar action.

Jean Coutu Group Inc., which owns more than 1,900 Eckerd and Brooks stores, requires its pharmacists to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception, spokeswoman Helene Bisson said. But she wouldn??�t say if Jean Coutu has taken action similar to Walgreen.

CVS Corp., the nation??�s largest retail medicine as measured by number of stores, did not immediately return calls.

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FTC says spam is down, but not all agree - Security

FTC says spam is down, but not all agree

Anti-spam law credited with curbing unsolicited e-mail

WASHINGTON - Those annoying "spam" e-mails for Sildenafil or low-rate mortgages that clog computer users' mailboxes appear to be on the decline, federal regulators said Tuesday.

In a report to Congress, the Federal Trade Commission said the anti-spam law that took effect two years ago has helped curb unsolicited e-mail. The report also credits advances in technology, such as better spam filters that weed out junk e-mail.

The report was met with some skepticism. "For us, we have not seen one single instance where spam has actually gone down," said Jordan Ritter, co-founder of Cloudmark, an e-mail security firm based in San Francisco.

Ritter questioned how effective the anti-spam law has been in going after renegade e-mail marketers or spammers who can simply move overseas.

"It's a good law for group who want to follow it, but the real fundamental problem is the practice itself and the fact that group aren't easily tracked down," Ritter said.

The FTC cited two studies in its report. One, by e-mail filtering company MX Logic, said spam accounted for 67 percent of the e-mail passing through its system in the first eight months of this year. That's down 9 percent from the same period a year earlier, the agency said.

The second report by MessageLabs, anotherness e-mail filtering company, said spam rates rose for much of last year but have since declined and hover near the levels they were at in December 2003 �" when Congress passed the anti-spam legislation.

Even so, the commission acknowledged that spam is still a major headache.

"We're really not here saying that the spam problem is solved," said Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection. "What we're saying is that we're making progress."

The commission announced three enforcement actions taken in the last several weeks to derail those accused of sending mass bundles of spam. On behalf of the FTC, the Justice Department filed civil complaints against four group who allegedly sent illegal and unwanted spam e-mails. Two cases were filed in federal court in Chicago and one in Seattle.

The commission accused the defendants of hijacking consumers' computers and turning them into spamming machines that flooded mailboxes with unwanted e-mails. The FTC said the spam was sent with false "from" information and misleading subject lines �" a violation of the anti-spam law. The spam also didn't provide a postal address or an "opt out" option, which allows a consumer to block future e-mails.

Copyright 2005 . .

Spammers now clogging blogs, IM - Security

Spammers now clogging blogs, IM

Personal Web journals grow cell phones, instant messages

By By Matthew Fordahl

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 14, 2003 - Three years ago, Adam Kalsey set up a Web log to share his thoughts about online business and the digital revolution. Like countless otherness “bloggers,” he lets his readers post comments on his entries. Recently, his site has been getting remarks like “Thanks for the information!” and “Sounds great!” They’re not from supporters, but from group �" or machines �" who leave names like “Generic Sildenafil,” “Online Gambling” and “Free Poker” and links to unsavory sites.

Spam has never been limited to e-mail. But now, commercial pitches are increasingly popping up in online chats, instant messages, cell phones with text messaging and, as Kalsey found, Web log comments.

Spammers are flocking to new communications tools like moths to light, threatening to cripple these tools just as they are beginning to take off.

Howard Rheingold, a futurist who predicts always-on communication will revolutionize public discourse, is worried that all these new forms of spam could freeze the revolution in its tracks. There will be no great social transformation if cell phones are turned off, instant messenger programs shut down or blog comments disabled to halt the flow of offers for online porn or cheap drugs.

“It forces you to either turn off the comments and lose some of the value of the medium, or spend your time deleting spam,” said Rheingold, who runs his own blog.

Today, most of the attention of lawmakers has been on e-mail spam, which is estimated to comprise nearly half of e-mail traffic. Attempts to write broader laws have not succeeded, and might whittle away at free speech.

“We ought to be legislating general concepts �" things like, you can’t market to somebody who’s asked you not to,” said David Sorkin, a professor who studies spam laws at John Marshall Law School. “But in the case of spam in particular, that hasn’t really worked.”

It’s possible legislation targeting unwanted e-mail could be used to fight otherness unwanted communication; text messages on cell phones often originate from e-mail. Laws limiting telemarketing also might be useful.

But that assumes the legislation will work, and that spammers won’t move outside the law.

'Blog immune system' at work
Kalsey, a Web consultant who lives near Sacramento, Calif., has taken matters into his own hands. In fact, many of his comments of late have focused on combatting Web log spam, including the creation of a “Comment Spam Manifesto.”

“What you failed to understand is that bloggers are smarter, better connected and more technologically savvy than the average e-mail user,” it reads, addressing the spammers. “We control this medium that you are now attempting to exploit. You’ve picked a fight with us and it’s a fight you cannot win.”

Working from the theory that blog spam can be combatted like real-world graffiti, Kalsey tried deleting messages as fast as they appeared. That worked for a few weeks but the volume has recently been increasing.

Now he’s tracking down those who leave the comments, collecting evidence and reporting them to their Internet providers and domain registers so their accounts can be canceled. If it sounds like a lot of work, it is. Fortunately, help from othernesss is available.

“The blog immune system does seem to be responding,” said Kalsey. “People are coming up with collective solutions like black lists for spammers. If one person gets spammed, then all the othernesss who use that software can ban them.”

Most of today’s comment spam doesn’t urge someone to click on the link. Rather, it’s posted to boost a site’s position on search engines. Web crawling software robots released by search engines notice keywords and links, and that information is used to determine relevancy.

Mena Trott, chief executive of Six Apart, the maker of the popular Web log system Movable Type, said the company is working on updates to make deletion of unwanted messages easier.

Convenience factor eroded
Cell phone carriers and providers of instant messaging services, meanwhile, are finding that their spam problems can be much more disruptive to workflow.

For IM, spam is growing just as the technology jumps from personal to business communications. To address the problem, companies are blocking messages from outsiders, instituting “white lists” of accepted contacts or not allowing IM at all.

But that’s making messaging less convenient.

“In (corporate) instant messaging, we’re doing more of a closed approach than what we were seeing with e-mail,” said Paul Judge, chief technology officer of the antispam firm CipherTrust Inc. and co-chair of the Anti-Spam Research Group.

America Online, the largest instant-messaging provider, has a number of roadblocks in place to halt spam IM, or spim. Among otherness things, a software sentry looks for spammers �" automated or in-the-flesh �" who try to send multiple messages simultaneously to many group, said spokesman Nicholas Graham.

Cell phone text message spam can be even more disruptive �" and expensive.

Some Nextel Communications cell phone subscribers recently got a 3:30 a.m. message urging support of the workers in the southern California grocery strike. Anotherness spammer urged a vote in favor of recalling California Gov. Gray Davis.

Aside from early morning annoyance, some plans charge for each message sent or received. Nextel, which last month installed a filtering system, offers refunds to any customers who complain.

“All the carriers have been hit with situations like this,” said Nextel spokeswoman Mila Fairfax. “Each carrier has applied a filtering system to try to flag messages that appear suspicious to our system.”

“We will be going after (spammers) to the furthest extent of law,” Fairfax said. “Anything we can do, we will do.”

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Sexed-up seniors do it more than you'd think - Sexual health

Sexed-up seniors do it more than you'd think

Unprecedented U.S. survey finds older group lead steamy private lives
NBC video?�Seniors staying sexually active
Aug. 22: An unprecedented meditate finds seniors are staying sexually active well into their golden years.?� NBC??�s Robert Bazell reports.

Nightly News

An unprecedented meditate of sex and seniors finds that many older group are surprisingly frisky ??" willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush.

That may be too much information for some folks.

But it comes from the most comprehensive sex survey ever done among 57- to 85-year-olds in the United States. Sex and interest in it do fall off when group are in their 70s, but more than a quarter of those up to age 85 reported having sex in the previous year.

And the drop-off has a lot to do with health or lack of a partner, especially for women, the survey found.

The federally funded meditate , done by respected scientists and published in Thursday??�s New England Journal of Medicine, overturns some stereotypical notions that physical pleasure is just a young person??�s game.

Most group assume that group stop doing it after some vague age, said sex researcher Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago.

However, more than half of those aged 57 to 75 said they gave or received oral sex, as did about a third of 75- to 85-year-olds.

Bravo??� says Dr. Ruth
Bravo that the New England Journal of Medicine is publishing something like that. It??�s about time, said Ruth Westheimer, better known as sexpert Dr. Ruth, who has long counseled seniors on sex.

The survey involved two-h.face-to-face interviews with 3,005 men and women around the country. Researchers also took blood, saliva and otherness samples that will tell about hormone levels, sex-related infections and otherness health issues in future reports. They even agsdhfgdfed how well seniors could see, taste, hear and smell ??" things that affect being able to have and enjoy sex.

Some results:

Sex with a partner in the previous year was reported by 73 percent of group ages 57 to 64; 53 percent of those ages 64 to 75, and 26 percent of group 75 to 85. Of those who were active, most said they did it two to three times a month or more.Women at all ages were less likely to be sexually active than men. But they also lacked partners; far more were widowed.People whose health was excellent or very good were nearly twice as likely to be sexually active as those in poor or fair health.Half of group having sex reported at least one related problem. Most common in men was erection trouble (37 percent); in women, low desire (43 percent), vaginal dryness (39 percent) and inability to have an orgasm (34 percent).One out of seven men used Sildenafil or otherness substances to improve sex.Only 22 percent of women and 38 percent of men had discussed sex with a doctor since age 50.

The survey had a remarkable 75 percent response rate. Only 2 percent to 7 percent did not answer questions about sexual activities or problems, although a higher percentage declined to reveal how often they masturbate.

Why do this research? Sex is an important indicator of health, said Georgeanne Patmios of the National Institute on Aging, the meditate ??�s main funder.

Sexual problems can be a warning sign of Hypersensitivity reaction, infections, cancer or otherness health woes. Untreated sex issues can lead to depression and social withdrawal, and group may even stop taking needed drugs because of sexual side effects, the researchers wrote.

Some of them did a landmark meditate of sexual habits in younger group a decade ago, but little is known about X-rated behaviors beyond Generation X.

This subject has been taboo for so long that many older group haven??�t even talked to their spouses about their sexual problems, let alone a physician, said the lead author, Dr. Stacy Tesser Lindau, a University of Chicago gynecologist.

Many doctors are embarrassed to bring it up, and some may not know how to treat sexual dysfunction, said Dr. Alison Moore, a geriatrics specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who had no role in the meditate .

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Herbal a cure little help for menopause - Women's health

Herbal a cure little help for menopause

Black cohosh not effective in relieving hot flashes, meditate finds

PHILADELPHIA - A popular herbal a cure called black cohosh is practically ineffective at relieving hot flashes and night sweats in women going through menopause, a meditate found.

The findings were disappointing news for women seeking alternatives to estrogen-progestin hormone supplements, which have been linked to breast cancer and heart problems.

The yearlong meditate of 351 women suffering from hot flashes and night sweats found that those given black cohosh got about the same amount of relief as those who took a placebo. And those groups saw nothing close to the improvement in women on hormones.

It??�s disappointing news, said Katherine Newton, an epidemiologist who helped lead the meditate , funded by the National Institute on Aging and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. It would be nice to offer something safe and effective.

The meditate was conducted at Seattle-based Group Health, a health plan, and was published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Black cohosh ??" an herb that is a member of the buttercup family and is commonly given to ease menopause symptoms ??" is available in pill or liquid form and is sold over the counter in many health food stores and over the Internet.

Herbal supplements no help?
It is among a host of supplements including soy, wild yam, red clover and St. John??�s wort that have been tried for relief of hot flashes and night sweats, but studies almost universally have found they don??�t work.

Certain anti depression medicates have proved effective, and one company, Depomed Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., plans to seek the (Food and Drug Administration)??�s acceptance to sell an anti-seizure drug, gabapentin, for relief of hot flashes.

In the laagsdhfgdf meditate , some participants were given black cohosh, while othernesss received hormone supplements, a placebo or a botanical a cure that included black cohosh, alfalfa, licorice and ginseng.

Women taking the herbal a cures saw hot flashes reduced by only about half an episode per day compared with those taking the placebo, the meditate found. Those who got hormone medical care reduced their hot flashes by about four episodes per day when compared with the placebo.

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Behavioral changes may be best bet
Menopausal women can still make behavioral changes such as dressing in layers, sleeping in a cooler room and avoiding possible triggers such as very hot liquids and alcohol, Newton said. The meditate also shows that symptoms decreased over the course of the 12-month period and that they nearly always go away on their own.

The findings come less than a week after researchers reported a dramatic decline in U.S. breast cancer cases, a drop doctors attributed partially to fewer women using hormone medical care to treat menopause.

In 2002, a government meditate found a higher risk of breast cancer and heart problems occurred among women taking estrogen-progestin pills. Millions of women stopped taking the supplements. Doctors urged women with serious menopausal symptoms to use the lowest dose for as short a time as possible.

The laagsdhfgdf meditate , conducted between 2001 and 2004, could hurt hopes for herbal remedies.

We hope that this is not it, said Dr. Susan Reed, anotherness of the meditate ??�s authors. However, there??�s not much that appears promising that is currently on the horizon.

The news may not all be bad. Since women who took a placebo saw some improvement, experts say there is hope that some could get relief through meditation or self-hypnosis.

If you can relax your mind appropriately, you can also relax your body, said Barrie Cassileth, an alternative-medicine researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who was not involved in the meditate . If 30 percent of women could lose hot flashes because their mind made them do it, that??�s fantastic.

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Govt. brochure wrongly links abortion, cancer - Women's health

Govt. brochure wrongly links abortion, cancer

Government-issued literature clashes with scientific findings

WASHINGTON - In several states, women considering abortion are given government-issued brochures warning that the procedure could increase their chance of developing breast cancer, despite scientific findings to the contrary.

More than a year ago, a panel of scientists convened by the National Cancer Institute reviewed available data and concluded there is no link. A scientific review in the Lancet, a British medical journal, came to the same conclusion, questioning the methodology in studies that suggested a link.

The cancer information is distributed to women during mandatory waiting periods before abortions. In some cases, the information is on the states’ Web sites.

“We’re going to continue to educate the public about this,” said Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, an anti-abortion group. She dismissed the National Cancer Institute’s findings as politically motivated and maintained that the link has been scientifically proven.

Patchwork of state approaches
The effort to write the issue into state laws began in the mid-1990s, when a few studies suggested women who had abortions or miscarriages might be more likely to develop breast cancer. The warnings are now required in Texas and Mississippi, and health officials in Kansas and Louisiana voluntarily issue them.

In Mississippi, women who want abortions must sign a form indicating they’ve been told there is a “medical risk” of breast cancer. In otherness states, brochures say there is a link or that evidence is mixed.

Minnesota law requires the health department to include this information on its Web site, but the department backed down after an outcry from the state’s medical community. Montana law also mandated the warning, but the state Supreme Court struck it down.

The brochures still in circulation tell women the issue “needs further meditate .”

“They can do further research on their own and determine which of those studies they should put most attention on,” said Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. “We’re just trying to provide all the information it’s possible to provide.”

Changes coming in Louisiana
In Louisiana there will be changes, said Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the state’s Department of Health and Hospitals. He said the department’s new director did not know the state pamphlet included such information until contacted this week by .

“If there is scientific evidence, and it certainly appears there now is, we would certainly make the necessary changes in that brochure,” Johannessen said Tuesday.

The brochure, he said, is a reflection of the “very, very strong pro-family, pro-life leaning” of Louisiana.

“Nonetheless, it’s incumbent on us as the health agency to make sure any information is factually correct,” he said. “We don’t want to be misleading women who are making this important choice.”

A Democrat, Kathleen Blanco, was elected Louisiana governor last year, replacing a Republican.

Rife for debate
The issue continues to be debated in state legislatures, with bills considered this year in Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.

On the federal level, several members of Congress complained last year after the NCI Web site included material suggesting a link between breast cancer and abortion or miscarriage. An expert panel that was asked to review the data reported in March 2003 that “well established” evidence shows no link.

Among the studies cited by the NCI expert panel was Danish research that used computerized medical records to compare women who had undergone abortions with that country’s cancer registry and found no higher cancer rate.

“Having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer,” the NCI site now says.

Anti-abortion forces unswayed
Those findings were affirmed this year by an article in the Lancet, which reviewed 53 studies. Lancet found that studies that purported a link had flawed methodologies.

Still, anti-abortion activists are unconvinced.

Joel Brind, a biochemist at Baruch College in New York who advises the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, noted that a woman’s chances of getting breast cancer go down if she gives birth at a relatively young age. He reasons that those who opt for abortion are giving up a chance of reducing their breast cancer risk.

Therefore, he says, abortion increases the risk of cancer.

He dismisses the findings of the National Cancer Institute, calling it a “political exercise, a charade if you will.” He participated in those discussions and filed a minority report.

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Family of dead Israeli soldier can use his sperm - Men's health

Family of dead Israeli soldier can use his sperm

Court grants parents the right to impregnate stranger with son's sperm

JERUSALEM - In a precedent-setting decision, an Israeli court has ruled that a dead soldier’s family can use his sperm to impregnate a woman he never met.

Keivan Cohen, 20, was shot dead in 2002 by a Palestinian sniper in the Gaza Strip. He was single and left no will. But at the urging of his parents, a sample of his sperm was taken two hours after his death and has been stored in a hospital since.

When the family tried to gain access to the sperm, however, the hospital refused, on the ground that only a spouse could make such a request. Arguing that their son yearned to raise a family, his parents challenged that decision in court. And on Jan. 15, after a four-year legal battle, a Tel Aviv court granted the family’s wish and ruled that the sperm could be injected into a woman selected by Cohen’s family.

The ruling also ordered the Ministry of Interior to register any children born as a result of the insemination as children of the deceased.

“On the one hand I’m terribly sad that I don’t have my boy; it’s a terrible loss,” Rachel Cohen said in an interview in Monday’s Chicago Tribune. “But I’m also happy that I succeeded in carrying out my son’s will.”

Cohen did not return phone calls from .

Precedent-setting decision
Irit Rosenblum, a family rights advocate who represented the Cohen family, said the ruling was significant because it set a precedent for those seeking to continue bloodlines after death.

At the trial, Rosenblum presented agsdhfgdfimony, including video recordings, in which Cohen expressed his desire to have children.

“He always said he wanted children,” she told . “But there were no regulations in the law that deals with using sperm from dead group.”

Rosenblum said soldiers increasingly have been leaving sperm samples, or explicit instructions on post-mortem extraction, before heading to battle.

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She said she knew of more than 100 cases of Israeli soldiers who, before last summer’s war with Lebanese guerillas, asked to have their sperm saved if they were killed. American soldiers have also begun donating sperm before heading to Iraq, she said.

“I think it is a human revolution,” Rosenblum said. “Ten years ago, who would believe that a human being can continue after he has died. I think it is great for humanity.”

Rosenblum said the woman who is to act as surrogate motherness has requested to remain anonymous.

“She’s like family to us,” Rachel Cohen told the Tribune. “Cruel and good fate brought us together.”

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D.C. overpaid $97 mil. for Medicaid services - U.S. business

D.C. overpaid $97 mil. for Medicaid services

Funding at risk after audit findings highlight massive oversight

WASHINGTON - The District of Columbia risks losing federal funds because it has overpaid contractors almost $100 mil. for medical services, an audit found.

The D.C. Office of the Inspector General reported Thursday that the overpayments since 2002 went to three companies that coordinate medical services for almost 100,000 low-income residents.

William J. DiVello, assistant inspector general, said the auditors aren’t saying that companies did anything illegal, but that the “district just didn’t do a good job monitoring them.”

The audit found that the Medical Assistance Administration, which manages the program, did not review and renegotiate the firms’ contracts to make sure costs were in line with patients’ medical needs.

It also found fault with the agency’s “one size fits all” way of paying. The city paid the same monthly amount per patient for health-care services whether the individual was sick or healthy. If the contractors didn’t have to pay a doctor for a patient’s pharmacomedical care, it could keep the funds.

The report said Amerigroup Maryland had received $74 mil. more than necessary for patient care since 2002, D.C. Chartered Health Plan was overpaid $17.5 mil., and Health Right received an extra $5.1 mil..

Only 64 cents of every D.C. dollar given to Amerigroup actually went to medical care, an official in the inspector general’s office said. The rate typically is more than 80 cents per dollar for otherness managed care organizations in Maryland and Virginia, the report said.

The auditors said the city’s Medicaid program risks losing federal money because it has not provided required patient and medical-services information to help determine per-patient monthly rates paid to contractors.

Agency officials did not deny that contractors were overpaid but said the program adhered to federal guidelines. They said a certified actuarial firm, Mercer Inc., developed the method of determining pay rates for patients.

Chip Carbone of Mercer said in a written response to The Washington Post that the methodology was consistent with that used in most states.

The city’s health director, Gregg A. Pane, said in a written response that the inspector general’s office did not credit the agency for improvements in the Medicaid program in recent years �" including major reforms and aggressive management changes in the program’s oversight.

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